Walking A Dark Road
by Secret Staircase
Summary: While she is hospitalised during FF3, Mio meets a girl who's afraid of the dark.


**A/N:** This was supposed to be a short comment fic, and grew. The title is from _Fear of the Dark_ by Iron Maiden, because I am just that sad. ;)

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The first time Mio oversleeps, Kei teases her about it – gently, so she'll know he doesn't really mind. In fact, she thinks he's secretly rather pleased. She knows he's been worried about her; he sees how tired she looks, and he sees her light under the bedroom door when she's awake all night, when she can't bring herself to turn it off.

Light is a luxury in this world. People don't realise. You never know until all you've got are flicking candles, a flickering flashlight, such a frail barrier against all that darkness. Hardly anyone understands that now.

For weeks she lay wide awake, staring at her bedroom in the lamplight, at the darkness pressing in on her windows, staring at Mayu's empty bed.

Nobody understands.

Then there's the camera, and that place Kei went to. She read his notes. You can meet the dead there. She doesn't want to meet the dead; she just wants to be where Mayu is. Even if it's dark.

That night she has all the lights on. For a while there just the bedside lamp was enough, but then there was that camera, like a dead thing come back. All that's supposed to be drowned under the reservoir, but she supposes some things won't drown. So Mio lies wide awake, all the lights on, her knees pulled up to her chest, staring.

And she sees snow falling. She sees her bedroom, neat and lonely and empty with only her to fill it (and she feels like nothing at all, nothing at all), but behind it, or under it, or through it, she sees snow. She sees an old manor house, hulking like a shipwreck through veils of icy white, and she has to go inside.

That's the first time she doesn't wake up before her alarm goes off, and Kei teases her in the mild way that she likes. She can tell he thinks she's getting better. Even nightmares aren't necessarily bad, he says offhandedly. Nightmares are a way for your mind to make bad memories better. Doesn't Mio think so?

She doesn't say anything. It's not his fault. He doesn't know how deep a dream can feel, like walking away from a lighted room into a world of unbroken shadow. He has no way of knowing that, and he's lucky.

The next time, when she comes downstairs at noon, he doesn't tease her. He says he guesses she needed the rest, and he's glad she's not having trouble sleeping any more. It's half a question, and she reassures him that she's not. Falling asleep is easy now. When she goes to bed she teeters on the brink, looking into the darkness of dreams, and then steps off the edge of the world. That's how it feels. Just a step, and she might fall forever this time.

The jokes stop after that, though. So do his tentative suggestions that she might be getting better. All that stops when Mio sleeps for sixteen hours.

When she does wake up he is sitting at her bedside. He has a book in his lap, but she can tell he hasn't been reading it. She tries to hide the pain she feels upon waking, but she doesn't do a very good job of it, and Kei asks her, very seriously, if she's been having bad dreams. When she tells him about the old house in the snow, he sits back in his chair and looks at her for a long time. The pages of the book spring closed again, but Kei doesn't notice he's lost his place; he only looks at her.

She knows why. She read his notes about the abandoned house, about the patients who have the same dream she's been having. She wants to tell him it's all right; she knows what's happening to her, and she doesn't mind. She feels closer to Mayu now than she has since they found her and brought her back to the real world. Even if it hurts, it's worth it.

The next time, she wakes up in a hospital bed. There's a letter from Kei on the bedside table, explaining that he'll be with her as soon as he can, but he has some things he needs to do, and in the meantime, the doctors will be able to care for her better than he can.

The curtain beside her bed is drawn. She reaches out a finger and hooks it aside, because she doesn't like not being able to see all of the room she's in. There's a girl in the next bed, her arm bandaged and crossed over her stomach, her blonde hair hanging over the edge of her pillow. She stares up at the ceiling and doesn't look at Mio. Mio lets the curtain fall back. The yawning dark of sleep is there, ready for her, and she steps off the edge.

She wakes that night, confused. There's screaming and a chaos of white figures; she thinks of seagulls, she thinks of summer trips to the beach with her parents and Mayu, she thinks of Mayu dropping an ice cream and the seagulls crowding round and screaming and Mayu crying, and Mio gave Mayu her own ice cream, but Mayu's not here now, and the pain is, the pain, the –

Mio's in the hospital bed, the pain of the tattoo receding are nurses hurrying back and forth; the girl in the next bed has just stopped screaming, and is sobbing out a torrent of English – Mio knows a little English, but she can't understand it when it's spoken this fast and through tears. The nurses are busy and don't seem to notice that Mio's awake. Eventually the girl in the next bed seems to calm down – maybe the nurses gave her something; the curtain is still drawn and Mio can't see – and they start to leave. The last one flicks the light off, and Mio hears the girl in the next bed moan as the darkness crashes back down on them.

Mio looks around uneasily. She doesn't like the hospital room in the dark. All the other beds are empty, and the curtain makes things worse. She sits up in bed, and the girl reacts immediately, her voice lifting in fear again.

'Is someone there?'

Now she's speaking in Japanese. Mio pulls the curtain aside so the girl can see her.

'Do you mind if I keep this open?' she asks. Normally she'd introduce herself, but she's tired, and she thinks this is the quickest way to show the girl she's harmless.

The girl has drawn back, away from the curtain – away from Mio – but now relaxes just a little. 'Okay.' The word catches as she says it.

Mio slips out of bed to pull the curtain all the way back. Now she can see the whole room, all the moonlit spaces under the empty beds, and the shape of the girl, sitting up to watch her.

'Would you...'

Mio, about to get back into bed, turns to look at her.

'Would you put the light on for a minute?' the girl says humbly. 'Would you... see if there's something under my bed?'

Mio does. 'There's nothing there,' she says. She looks curiously at the foreign girl, whose face is washed-out in the fluorescent light, eyes huge and surrounded by purple shadows as dark as bruises. 'Did you have a nightmare?'

The girl looks down. 'I guess so. Don't – ' She lifts her head again, sounding almost panicked. 'Don't turn it off just yet. Wait a minute.'

Mio stands there patiently by the light switch, waiting while the girl looks all around her, staring into the corners, under the other beds.

'Okay,' she says, with some reluctance. 'I'm okay now.'

Mio doesn't think that's true. In any case, she's not okay. Now that the room's flooded with light, she'd rather keep it that way. 'I think I'll leave it on,' she says.

She gets back into bed and closes her eyes. Even with the lights on, sleep is very close, but she hears the girl say,

'I'm Karen. What's your name?'

'Mio,' she says, her voice coming from somewhere deep underground. Already she can see the snow falling.

After that, she doesn't wake up for two days.

Karen is still there. It's her screaming that wakes Mio up again. This time they have male orderlies trying to hold her down. Mio hears the doctor at the door saying that if she keeps having violent episodes like this, they'll have to move her from the general ward.

When they're all gone, Mio draws the curtain back again. Karen is staring at the ceiling, tears making tracks down her temples.

'I thought it would be better if you were here,' she says, 'but it doesn't make a difference. You're always asleep.'

'What do you mean?' Mio asks. She feels really awake now. It would still be easier to dream, but, strange as it would sound, she's too tired. It's more restful to lie here and talk to Karen than go back into the endless village.

'Ever since I went into that house,' Karen whispers, as if to herself. She turns to look at Mio. 'I have to get out of here.'

The light in the hallway outside goes out with a harsh buzz that sounds more human than mechanical. Karen raises herself on her elbows, and Mio turns in that direction, too.

'She's coming,' Karen says, her voice wavering. 'Don't let her take me, please!'

The room is suddenly dark. The floodlight over the parking lot that was shining in through the window has gone out. Karen scrambles out of her bed and backs towards the door. She has definitely been given some sort of sedative; her movements are slow and clumsy, her feet dragging on the floor, but she moves with surprising speed.

'Where are you going?' Mio calls, but Karen vanishes into the hallway without looking back. The room is dark, and quiet; Mio can't hear a thing, not even the hospital staff or other patients moving around in other rooms. It occurs to her how odd it is, in this crowded city, that there should be a room with not one but two empty beds.

The darkness begins to gain weight and substance. It is like an ash that falls softly, soundlessly, and in time buries whole cities. The hospital might be deserted, for all the sound Mio can hear. The corridor beyond the open door seems to go on forever.

Abruptly, the lights outside snap on again, and the fluorescent strip-light in the hall starts to flicker. It was probably just a brief power outage; Mio ought to be relieved, but instead her disquiet only deepens. She thinks of going to find a nurse, but that dark hallway with the uncertainly blinking light is too much like her dreams. She makes her way back to her bed, feeling around for a call button, but she can't find it. She goes to Karen's bed, and as she gropes around the pillow, something soft and fine tangles around her fingers.

She holds it up to the light. It's what she thought it was – a strand of hair – but although Karen's hair is blonde, this hair is black and straight.

Mio shakes it from her hand with a convulsive movement, as she might have shaken off a spider. It falls to the floor and coils there like letters in a foreign language. Mio turns away from it.

Now she can hear voices at the end of the corridor, and recognises Karen's voice among them, weak and cracked and exhausted as an old woman's. Mio climbs back hastily into her own bed; now that there's solid evidence she's not the only person left in this hospital, she'd rather not have to speak to anyone.

But they don't bring Karen back. The voices fade away again. Mio supposes that Karen must have tried to get out of the hospital, and so they've moved her to a more secure room. Nobody comes, but Mio can at least hear them, now: the squeak of a nurse's shoes on the tile floor, the rattle of a gurney – or a bed, she reminds herself, it might just be a bed – the distant buzz of somebody's call button, the sound of cars passing on the road outside.

Mio tries to stay awake, hoping that someone will come, so that she can ask them about Karen. In the end, though, the dark tide of sleep is too strong, and she slips off the edge of the world once more. She thinks it will be the last time.

It's not.

Sunlight dazzles her when she wakes. Mio is alive, and there's no pain. The curtains are drawn around her, and the sunlight shining through them is a beautiful thing, turning her surroundings into an enfolding shell of white gold.

When she feels she has basked in it long enough, she draws the curtain aside. An old woman is asleep in the bed beside her, her wrinkled mouth working like a baby's as she dreams. The other two beds are also occupied, Mio sees. She settles back in her bed, presses the call button, and waits.

Later, as she's getting dressed ready to go home – it feels good to have shoes on her feet again; it makes her feel grounded – she asks the nurse about the foreign girl who was in the bed next to hers.

'She was a little distressed,' the nurse says delicately. 'She has a room by herself now. That's safer.'

Mio notices the nurse doesn't specify who will benefit from this increased safety. She thinks of Karen's swollen, shadowed eyes – insomniac's eyes. Mio should know.

As she's about to leave she remembers Kei's card is still on the table beside her bed. She turns back to get it, and as she does, she notices a few strands of black hair looped around one of the feet of her bed, as if a cleaner swept them there, tangled on a broom's bristles, and they became caught. She remembers the black hairs she found, inexplicably, on Karen's pillow.

It makes her shiver, a little, to think of that, and it makes her sad to remember the fearful way Karen looked around the room when Mio switched the light on. All of that has an unpleasantly familiar feeling. But she can't afford to dwell on it. That's the sort of abyss she needs to stay away from now. Mio grabs Kei's card from the table and turns. She holds it against her chest as she walks down the hallway, which is neither dark nor endless after all.


End file.
